My uncles are identical twins and I can easily distinguish them, even in baby pictures. How can this variation exist?
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Because people are not entirely defined by their genes–the environment plays a VERY strong role in physical development. Consider the following two cases which can obviously affect differences in appearance:
1) One twin smokes, the other doesn’t
2) One twin has a deficit of of food, while another has a surfeit of food.
I am a monozygotic twin and have great difficulty distinguishing between myself and my brother in old photographs; however, any photo taken after high school or so and I can easily tell (and not just because those were my clothes and the others were my brother’s).
Even when young my parent’s could tell the who was who because there WERE subtle differences. I had much greater difficulty since I was not practiced in seeing both of our faces at the same time. We weren’t frequently looking in mirrors together, and had more “important” things to do than spend hours looking at photographs.
One great example of environmental impact on body features are fingerprints–my brother and I have different fingerprints. Fingerprints are formed during the early development and are caused by touching things inside the womb and creating “friction ridges”. These get set by the time you’re around 6 month old.
We both did one of the genetic ancestry things and we had a 100% DNA match. Our ancestries came out SLIGHTLY different, but that was due to the fact that we were tested using different versions of the company’s genetic identifying IC.
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